Leave Taking
by Delendaest
Summary: Tifa has the Stigma. She hides it as long as she can. [Advent Children AU.]
1. Like Fire

Tifa has the Stigma.

She hides it as long as she can. It's on her upper arm and at first it only looks like a bruise, which gives her a couple of days to track down a long-sleeved shirt. She moves Aerith's pink ribbon down to her wrist, like a bracelet, and that's that.

Soon enough, though, it starts to hurt. It wakes her up one night, a sting that goes through skin to muscle to bone. It feels like her arm is being torn from the socket and then set on fire.

She stumbles out of bed and paces up and down the tiny rectangle of floor between the bed and the door, panting.

But Tifa has felt pain before. She can handle this. And if it happens mostly at night then that's good, it means that Cloud and the kids won't notice. It's important to keep this from them. Denzel is already so scared. Marlene is losing hope. And Cloud is so frustrated that he can't help Denzel. He spends hours poring over medical journals and the dusty books he finds on deliveries, trying to find a cure or at least something better than black-market lidocaine to treat the symptoms.

There's nothing.

Tifa remembers his face after Aerith died and thinks, _He just can't know_.

The deception won't last forever, but she's going to make it work as long as possible. They've gained so much in the last two years. He's so much more like the Cloud she remembers from Nibelheim: gentler, a little more eager for life's myriad small events. It's as if he's looking forward, even with the darkness of Denzel's disease looming. She has to protect him for as long as she can. And Tifa has always been good at simply going on.

So she does.

She never wants to eat but her body is constantly crying out for sustenance. She's been making a lot of soup already because of Denzel, so it's fine. She has to force it down, but it never comes back up.

Her joints start to ache. She's cold. It's like she's an old woman. Of course it is: she's dying, isn't she? She buys an extra bottle of codeine off this black market dealer who comes into Seventh Heaven every third night for a vodka cran. It's expensive, and Denzel's painkillers are already taking up a chunk of money, so she splits each pill twice and parcels them out. She puts a sweater on over the t-shirt. She buys it from a woman who sells her weaves off a doorstep over on Ninth Street. It's where Cloud buys his shirts. Her new sweater doesn't look anything like his, but it comforts her to know that they're from the same place. And she is a little warmer.

It's the little things that get her through each day. She wakes up in the night from pain, and suffers through it for a couple of long pre-dawn hours, and then when it abates she sleeps a little more. In the morning she wakes up tired but still alive, and first thing she does it look out the window up at the sky. It's usually gray, but sometimes it's a brighter, bluer gray. At least it's _there_, no Plate in the way to hide it.

She rouses the kids and savors the warmth of their bodies on her hands. She combs Marlene's hair (it is _so _soft) and puts salve and a little lidocaine on Denzel's forehead. He's usually in good shape in the mornings; it's the afternoons they have to worry about with him.

Cloud, if he made it home from deliveries the night before, is usually awake by the time she heads downstairs. She can see the shadows moving under his door when she passes in the hall. She makes breakfast - oatmeal, usually; sometimes fried eggs or pancakes. She starts Cloud's coffee going in the little stovetop percolator. Every third day she allows herself to make tea, with a spoonful of precious honey stirred in. It's expensive stuff these days. So is the coffee, but that's different: it's for Cloud. He indulges in so few luxuries that even with the money that already goes to food and utility bills and painkillers, she holds back enough to make sure that she can buy coffee.

_What will he do when I'm gone?_ she wonders one morning, watching Cloud bend over his cup. Steam rises into his pale hair. _What will the kids eat?_

The next morning, she gets Marlene and Denzel up early and teaches them how to make oatmeal. "Just in case!" she says brightly. She gets a notebook and makes a list of things that seem important to know - how to light the pilot on the stove, where to hide the keys, how to run the laundry machine, how to close out the register for the bar and how to balance its account books - and then she sits and writes out, step by step, how to do them.

Cloud surprises her at it once, busting into the kitchen from the garage under the cover of noise from the radio. Tifa jumps a mile and drops her pencil on the floor.

Cloud looks at it for a moment and then bends down to retrieve it. She flips the notebook over, hiding the page covered with instructions on how to winterize the pipes.

He hands the pencil back to her, amusement in his eyes. "Boo," he says, and Tifa, heart still hammering, laughs harder than she should.

She has the kids start helping out more. She makes Denzel practice answering the phone. Marlene learns how to defrost the freezer. They start folding their own clothes and sweeping upstairs and changing the sheets on their beds. They grumble and complain but the ire washes over Tifa without a trace.

She bakes more, often enough through tears. She'll really miss this. She loves the kitchen at Seventh Heaven, this big warm room full of food and memories with Cloud and the kids. It has been her haven after all the fire and the fighting. She hides cookies in Fenrir's secret glove compartment where Cloud keeps his sunglasses so that he'll find them at whatever ungodly hour he leaves on delivery. She writes down each and every recipe she knows. She wants to leave a trace: a taste of her in his mouth that he can have again after she's gone. Like Aerith's flowers or Zack's sword. Tifa doesn't quite believe that this will hit Cloud the same way those deaths did, but she means _something_ to him. She is his oldest friend, and he is hers, and they have that, whatever else they fail to grasp.

Denzel continues to suffer, lying in bed all day sometimes, and Tifa's heart squeezes like a fist when she thinks that he might well go first. He wasn't very strong when he came to them, and he's not very strong now. All the disease has to do is keep pushing for a few more weeks.

She's been teaching him how to do all these things, but none of her preparations will matter, in the end. Marlene and Cloud will lose them both.

And who knew what Tifa would lose? She would die and she'd be lost inside the Lifestream. And so would Denzel, and when Marlene and Cloud died so would they, and none of them would ever find each other again.

But what if, she wonders, Cloud _won't _care? If Denzel dies, if Tifa dies, all he has to do is give Marlene back to Barrett. Then he can be as free as he seems to long for.

Tifa is sinking.

She finds herself in tears more often, tired more often. She walks around with a barbed-wire ball of grief in her throat. The Stigma grows, reaching down her bicep and curling up towards her shoulder. Sometimes the pain comes during the day and she has to leave the kids at the table or the customers in the bar and go hide in the bathroom to suffer through it. She buys caffeine pills - cheaper than more coffee - and resists upping her daily dose of codeine. She doesn't want her life to end in some kind of drugged-out stupor.

She is running out of time.

One night the pain is so bad she has to leave her room. The walls are closing in on her and the fire is burning in her bones. She wraps a blanket around herself and goes out into the hallway. The nighttime silence feels loud to her: suddenly her secret weighs on her, heavy and deadly. She would like nothing more than for one of them to somehow sense her agony, come out of their rooms and comfort her.

But this is an old feeling, really. As old as her mother's death, at least, and as likely to be met now as it was then. Tifa takes a deep breath and steps carefully along the splintery wooden boards to the staircase. She thinks for the millionth time that she ought to find a rug narrow enough to fit the hallway.

Orange light from the single streetlight comes filtering in through the window blinds, gilding the stove and the kitchen table with a feverish glow. The door to the bar is just across from the foot of the stairs. The other end of the room is her makeshift living room, just a couch and a rug and a couple of chairs squeezed into one of the kitchen's corners. Her home. It feels familiar but looks totally strange, draped in dark light and deep shadows.

Tifa's out of her room and that helps, but she can't sit still for pain. She paces up and down, wearing a path in the floor between the stove and the couch. Her feet are cold, which is a good distraction. She takes measured breaths and recites in her head the words to songs, poems from her schooldays, programs from the radio, anything she can think of.

For all the death she has seen, and all the times she has almost died, it is strange to her that here, now, she is coming to the end.

It really shouldn't be. She's seen a lot of death - caused some of it. Sephiroth almost killed her at Nibelheim and gave her a scar that daily reminds her. She has been in many battles since. But Tifa is no longer a girl reeling from the loss of her home, chasing after a boy she thought she knew, fighting in a war that made her a terrorist and then a rebel and then a freedom fighter. She has Seventh Heaven, now. She has Cloud. She has two children. In some ways it feels like her life has only really begun; and already she has to lose it?

There is a whisper of sound out of tune with her pacing. Tifa freezes. Footsteps on the staircase, and she backs into the shadowy corner by the couch by reflex.

It is Cloud, in a pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt with holes in it and one of Tsurugi's smaller swords in hand. He looks around the kitchen, his glowing eyes sweeping across the counters and the sink and the table and finally settling on the shadows where she stands.

"…Tifa?"

She swallows hard. The pain is still beating at her and she's so tired and she's scared, and she doesn't want Cloud to know any of that.

"It's me," she whispers, hoping the low tone will disguise any abnormal inflection in her voice. "I couldn't sleep. Why don't you go back to bed, Cloud?"

She sees the eyes vanish for a moment and reappear - a blink. And then instead of going up the stairs, Cloud leans the sword against the wall and pads near-noiselessly over to the couch. "What were you doing?"

"Did you hear my voice? I was thinking out loud." Tifa smiles brightly. Her heart is shivering in her throat, choking her.

"And walking?" he asks, skeptical.

"Yes, Cloud," Tifa whispers, a little annoyed at this sudden perceptiveness. Half an hour ago she wanted nothing _but_ him, but now she just wants him to leave. "Sorry if I woke you up, okay?" _Go away,_ she thinks as the burning in her arm surges and her breath catches in her throat.

She squeezes her eyes closed and sees red flames on the insides of her eyelids.

Cloud notices. His shoulders tense but he doesn't come around the side of the couch. "Tifa, what's wrong?"

It isn't fair. It isn't fair. She wanted to bear this burden herself.

She's hidden it as long as she can. But she can't hide it anymore. She can't even stand. She puts out a hand, the one without the Stigma, feeling for the armchair, and lowers herself into it. Cloud rounds the couch swiftly and comes near to her, hangs over her.

"I just don't feel very well," she says, a last-ditch attempt to obfuscate.

He shocks her by kneeling before her and laying one hand on her knee. The heat of it is warm and strange. She can't remember the last time he touched her. Nibelheim? Modeoheim? Surely since then, right? They live in the same house, after all.

It's stupid. It's stupid how much he means to her. But his eyes are _so_ blue; they always have been, even before they glowed.

"Tifa?"

"It's true. I'm sick." Her throat aches. She is so weak: how much she wants to tell him; how much she doesn't want him to know. She is scared of dying and she's scared of him.

His hand tightens on her knee. "With what?" Full of dread.

How does she do this?

Slowly, she loosens the blanket covering her. The air is cool. She touches her left arm with her right hand. In the dimness of the kitchen, the darker patch of the Geostigma is just visible.

The breath leaves him. _"No."_ He leans on her knee and reaches over and grips her arm just below the affliction. Tifa cries out in pain and he flinches away, lets go immediately.

"Does it hurt?" he asks.

_"Yes_, Cloud," Tifa grits out, suddenly angry, "yes, it hurts. It's like fire." His face, even in the darkness, is as terrible to see as she thought it would be, and she's furious that he cares and relieved that he cares. Everything inside of her is tumbled up by the pain and the fear.

"I knew something was wrong," he says. His hand is still on her knee, holding on tightly. "You've been so sad. How long have you-?"

"What does it matter?" she says. "It's ending soon now. I wanted to keep it from you until the end."

_"Why_?" he asks, quiet voice cracking.

She touches his hand on her knee. "What could you do, Cloud?" she asks, harsh words in a gentle voice. "It's breaking your heart to watch Denzel. I didn't want to give you more burdens. And- I was scared…"

"Of what?" he asks.

_Of you_, she cannot say. _Of you being glad to get rid of me. _

She shuts her eyes to hold back tears. "I didn't want to watch you watch me die." Her voice is as steady as she can make it. "I've been so happy here. With the kids. With you. I wanted to think of the present. Not the past. Not the future. I was _happy_."

He takes her hands in his. It is so unexpected and so longed-for that tears spill out from under her eyes. She crumples, bowing her head forward over their fingers, tears dripping onto her knees. "Tifa," she hears him say helplessly in front of her.

"I don't know what to say," she whispers. "I don't want to die, Cloud. I want to stay. But there is no cure for Geostigma." She grips his hands. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," Cloud says, suddenly fierce. "Tifa, you haven't ever owed me an apology. I…" His voice trails off. He leans his head against hers. "I don't know what to say either."

So he holds her hands in silence until her tears stop, and the streetlight turns off and the sun begins to rise, and a new day at Seventh Heaven begins.


	2. Going On

She's painting the kids' room. It needs it, for one thing: the plain gray paint they bought for cheap from the WRO when they were building the place has gone dingy and dull over the two years since. And they all need a project. It's the middle of a miserably wet and rainy week: the provisional school that Marlene goes to has shut down because of leaks, and there are barely any deliveries for Cloud. And also (this thought a small clear seed at the bottom of all of Tifa's thoughts) she wants Denzel to get the experience of painting his own room. Before the end.

"Denzel," she says, "use the roller."

"Nah," he tells her. "I like the brush." He gobs on paint in big sloppy swatches.

Tifa winces and smiles. "Well, since I won't be looking at it." The words come unthinkingly but she hears Cloud inhale sharply from where he's taping off the doorjamb. "Since it's not my room," she tacks on hurriedly. But the damage is already probably done, and Tifa feels the same flush of guilt married to anger that keeps coming over her ever since Cloud found out about her Geostigma.

She falls back on an old standby: changing the subject. "When I was a kid," she says to Denzel and Marlene, "my father let me paint my room. But I was really messy and got paint all over the floorboards, and he made me sand it off."

"What color was it?" Marlene asks.

Tifa points at the wall the kids are working on. "Blue!"

Denzel doesn't laugh, but he smiles, almost a grin. "So that's why you bought this color."

"Blue," Tifa says, "is an excellent color." And it is: the WRO paint is cheap as ever but comes in a lot more colors now, and this, a perfect sky blue, is cheerful and bright. Next to the dull gray it is covering over, it looks like the sky on the day after a storm on the mountain.

Cloud glances at her without turning around, a quick flash of his glowing eyes. Which are also blue, of course, tinted with the green mako. Maybe, Tifa muses, she should put his office-slash-bedroom next on the painting to-do list. Dingy gray can't be good for the psyche. And poor Cloud's psyche needed all the help it could get.

Now that he knows about the Geostigma, he has changed again. She can tell that he's trying to act as normal as possible, but he is angry. She can tell by the way he walks, a heavy combative tread; by the tone of his voice, even though he's hardly been talking; by the way he kicks Fenrir into gear in the mornings and drives away like he's heading towards a fight. He's gone longer and more often, comes back covered in dust and mud and sometimes monster guts.

He isn't really angry at Tifa. He is angry at the disease, at the world maybe. But she's the medium of this new pain, and she's caught in the crossfire of his helpless rage. He can barely look at her.

Marlene's swathe of paint soon runs into Denzel's, and they race to see who can paint higher, faster. Marlene is giggling outright; Denzel still has only that hidden smile. Tifa grins and even Cloud has a glint of mirth in his eyes. Two days ago he might even have laughed.

Tifa is angry too. She's angry that she couldn't keep her secret a longer; she is angry that Denzel will die first; she is angry that Cloud is doing this wounded-animal routine. But there is no one to fight against, and she isn't dead yet, and surely, by this point, Tifa knows how to just go on.

* * *

It is a week later when she finds out that she doesn't.

It's late. Marlene and Denzel are both in bed already; Tifa should sleep - she feels about ninety years old tonight - but Cloud hasn't come home yet. She can't stop thinking about that night when she finally told him she was sick, and how he just sat with her, giving her his warmth and his presence, comforting her.

Why won't he do that anymore?

This distance is exactly what she feared would happen.

So she wraps her blanket around her shoulders and waits at the kitchen table like an angry wife, her heart a ball of barbed wire in her chest; and when he finally comes back, parks Fenrir in the garage, comes through the back door with his muddy boots in one hand, the look on her face stops him cold.

"Welcome home," she says quietly.

He eyes her warily, nods once, and makes for the stairs.

"I want to talk to you." Her voice lashes across the room. He stops again, but won't turn to face her.

"What about?" he finally responds.

How maybe you hate me after all. Tifa twists her fingers beneath the blanket, pain zinging through her shoulder. "Can you just look at me, Cloud?"

He stiffens, surprised by her request. Slowly he turns, peering at her resentfully through his bangs. Now she doesn't feel like an angry wife; she feels like his mother, battling a teenager's bad attitude.

"How was your day?" she asks, picking the blandest topic she can think of, trying to make it easy on him.

"Uh, fine."

"What did you do?"

He looks at her like she's an idiot, and Tifa has to breathe deep to make room for the pain that contemptuous expression arrows into her. "Deliveries," he answers.

"Where did you go? What did you see?"

"Tifa, what's the point of this? None of this means anything," he snaps.

"We used to talk about this stuff all the time," Tifa reminds him, "we just used to talk, Cloud! Now you can barely look at me-"

He flinches, guilt running across his face.

"- and it's like you don't even want to be here anymore." Tifa keeps her eyes trained on him, looking for some hint of more than just _guilt,_ but Cloud, true to form, turns and walks towards the stairs. Running away from her.

Tifa's heart is cutting its way out of her chest wit every beat.

"You're not even the one who's dying!" she snaps, and for a second, two, three, she is so angry that she doesn't regret the words.

But then Cloud shutters up right in front of her, eyes glowing bright and unreadable, mouth a thin line, face impassive. She sees him swallow, her words going right down into his belly, words he will never forget, her words that are going to outlive her in his memory.

Her insides feel like they're twisting in the grip of some huge hand. "Wait, Cloud-" she begins, but he shakes his head and turns on one boot and walks away from her. "Wait!" she cries out to his back, but he doesn't turn back. He walks out, back into the garage, and a minute later - he has to put his boots back on - Fenrir roars to life. Cloud drives away from Seventh Heaven.

Tifa is shaking and breathing too hard. She cradles the elbow of her bad arm in her hand and a wave of self-pity and self-loathing and pathetic, childlike bewilderment wells up inside of her. "No," she says, and begins to cry.

He doesn't come back that night or the next and Tifa, out of a bloody-minded stubbornness that she knows won't serve her well, doesn't call him. She isn't able to sleep at all before the pain comes again, driving her out of bed and into laps around the living room, the kitchen, the garage.

This last one smells of laundry detergent and motor oil. The bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling cast a dim yellow gleam over everything. The clothes hanging on the wires strung in one corner are dry; if Tifa's arm weren't screaming she could take them down and fold them. She'll have to have Marlene or Denzel do it tomorrow.

She leans against the washing machine and gazes across the grimy concrete floor to the workbench, and the spattering of oil that marks where Cloud parks Fenrir.

"Stupid bike," she mutters out loud. "His one true love." Too bad he rode away on it. If he'd walked, she could have keyed it or something. Tifa was here.

The idea has appeal. Tifa goes to workbench, rummages through Cloud's junk - organized according to a system that only he knows - until she unearths a permanent marker. Its tip is blunted with use but when she tests it on the wood of the bench, it leaves a dark fat line.

She turns the line into the crossbar of the T. TIFA WAS HERE, she scribbles right across Cloud's space, where he can't help but see it.

The next morning dawns rather brightly, for a day in Edge. It feels like a personal insult as Tifa buckles down to take care of the pile of dishes waiting for her behind the bar. Her arm stings with the movement, but compared to the obvious agony that had wracked Denzel just half an hour ago, it's nothing. Marlene is upstairs with him now, keeping a cold cloth on his forehead, making sure he isn't alone. It's all they can do for him now.

The phone in Cloud's room rings as she clatters rocks glasses together in the soapy water. "He's not here anymore," she sing-songs viciously.

But it rings, and rings. It goes silent, and then starts ringing again. Tifa thinks of Denzel in pain in the room down the hall, trying to sleep, and grabs a dishtowel to violently wipe her hands dry. She manages to keep herself from stomping up the stairs, but it's a near thing.

She snatches up the phone. "Strife Delivery Service, how can I..?"

The voice on the far end if jovial, familiar, obnoxious.

She huffs a laugh with no actual mirth. "Yeah," she says. "I remember you."


	3. Church of the Lost

Tifa calls Cloud to pass along Reno's message. She's still hurt and angry, but there is no damn way she is giving his PHS number to a Turk.

"You got a call from Reno," she says to the voice mailbox. "He's in Healen. Says he's got work for you." She bites her lip. It feels like a storm is trying to bust out of her heart: the things she wants to say to Cloud, her impulse to reach out to him at odds with the hurt that has taken up residence there.

Her breath shudders out of her. "Cloud…how have you been?"

She hangs up. Her shoulder pulses with pain and she drops the phone onto the desk, backing against it as she allows it to wash through her. She can smell Cloud in here, and the evidence of him is everywhere: the cot where he sleeps, the stack of spare tires in the corner, the bottles of oil for Tsurugi on the shelf, and the books and articles on Geostigma scattered around. She presses the wolf's-head ring on her right hand to her lips. Cloud was here.

It passes.

Tifa has to get out of this house.

There are dishes still to do and chores to take care of before the bar is due to open that evening, but she doesn't care. She'll make it a day without getting them done. She is running out of days anyway. She feels like a trapped animal, about to chew her own arm off; she _needs_ to get out of here.

She takes Marlene, leaving a note for the sleeping, exhausted-looking Denzel next to a glass of cool water on the bedside table. The girl has been spending most of her days with Denzel, just keeping him company as the Geostigma eats away at his strength. "We'll bring him back some flowers," Tifa says to Marlene's concerned frown.

They take the rickety old jalopy that Tifa uses to pick up supplies from the market, a vehicle that runs only because of Cloud's mechanical aptitude and their close association with the head of the WRO. But it handles well enough to take them down to Sector Five, through the narrow way that has been cleared though the rubble of the slums. The smells of dust and motor oil and burnt wood and plastic waft in through the windows that are permanently stuck at halfway open or halfway shut. Marlene watches interestedly, not talking much, as they pass shattered apartments, crumbled storefronts, glittering drifts of broken glass, the odd chimney or staircase rising into alone into midair.

The air isn't any cleaner near the church, but Tifa can feel something in her lift as she parks the truck and Marlene bounds out, excited to see the flowers. The sunlight comes through a little more clearly here, and the walls of the church gleam even beneath their grime. When they walk inside, the stained glass of the windows are full of bold color. The symbol on the wall above the altar stands out against the pale stone, an old symbol of a dying religion that someone had once told Tifa was meant to signify the idea of sacrifice and salvation.

The idea is strange to her. Sacrifice means something is lost. Salvation means something is rescued. Those are two different things, two different outcomes. Tifa doesn't think they can coexist.

They pass through the dim narthex, up the aisle between the pews. The flowers glow brightly under the sun's light, and so does Marlene's dress as she hurries forward, hands outstretched to touch their petals.

Out of the corner of her eye Tifa catches sight of another dress, perfectly pink. She hears the clink of bracelets.

She spins and stares, fists clenched, but there is nobody there. She stands frozen, unsure whether to be disappointed or unnerved.

Aerith is dead, and _gone_, taken up by and sunken in to the Lifestream.

Marlene exclaims from the other side of the church and Tifa startles and spins again. But it is no ghost, only a bedroll and lantern and set beside a small wooden chest that Marlene has opened, the pearly gleam of material inside. Tifa's fists clench again.

Of course Cloud came to Aerith's church when he needed to escape. She herself had just done the same thing, hadn't she?

"Does Cloud live here?" Marlene says, frowning.

"I guess he does," Tifa says, trying to make her voice neutral instead of angry, or worse, jealous. But her emotions are not doing things on her terms these days, and both rise hot and hard into her throat. "He just wants to fight alone," she whispers.

"Fight?" Marlene asks, confused.

"No." Tifa's shoulder stings, and she cradles that elbow in the palm of her good hand, hunching around her pain. Why did he run away from her? Why wouldn't he stay? Why wouldn't he even try to be there for her? Why was it more important how hard this was for _him_? "No. I don't think that he will."

"Tifa!" Marlene is right in front of her, her little face worried. "Are you okay? Should you sit down?"

She lets the little girl guide her back to a pew. The wood is wobbly but sturdy enough to bear her weight, and Marlene's as she sits up on her knees beside her, hands hovering over the shoulder that Tifa is obviously still favoring. She touches it, and her little fingers come away black.

"That's just like Denzel!" Marlene's eyes are huge. "Tifa, are you sick?"

Tifa takes in a deep breath, releases it shakily through her nose. She nods, and Marlene's face crumples. "No, Tifa," she says, "that's not fair." She covers her face with her hands, and the gesture is so heartbreakingly _adult_ \- the practice of grief come around again, for a child who has lost and is expecting to lose too much already. Tifa reaches out and guides Marlene closer. The girl slides off the pew and buries her face in Tifa's lap, sobbing into the soft leather as Tifa strokes her hair, her back, attempting to soothe her. The ghost of Aerith and the absence of Cloud loom around them, the lost and the left.

The doors to the church bang open. Tifa jumps and Marlene shrieks, flinching against Tifa as she spins to see who came in.

At first she sees pale hair, black leather, and thinks it is Cloud. But this man is taller, bulkier, his leather suit more form-fitting, his hair a sleek silver upward sweep instead of Cloud's yellow nimbus. Even from across the church she can see the harsh set of his features, the taunting smile and brutal eyes. There is some kind of weapon strapped to the outside of his left arm, a cumbersome-looking gauntlet strapped to a large silver rectangle that covers him from wrist to elbow. Two thick silver spikes project over the back of his fist.

Foreboding surges though her, dormant instincts from her days with AVALANCHE, and she hurries to her feet. Marlene clings to her side, still sniffing back tears. He stalks up the aisle towards them, his footsteps heavy on the wood floor, encroaching on the quiet space.

"Wanna play?" the man says, holding out one hand in invitation. Tifa sends him her harshest glare, willing her eyes to fry him on the spot. He grins and steps forward, into the flowers. "Guess that's a no. Where's Mother?"

He follows this non sequitur with a deep grimace as he notices the flowers for the first time. He holds his nose in disgust at their scent, and now Tifa _knows_ he is bad news. "Gross!" he groans, and pins his eyes on her again, more irritated now. "Hey! Where's Mother?"

"There's no one here!" Tifa snaps.

"Fine," he huffs, and grins again. _Laughs_ at her. "Play with me."

Wordlessly Tifa pushes Marlene away. She runs and ducks behind a stone pillar, sadly insufficient cover for any kind of fight.

Tifa reaches into her back pocket for her gloves. She pulls them on slowly, buying a little time as well as relishing the familiar motion. The sting in her shoulder fades, the ache in her heart subsiding under the rising pre-battle rush.

How long has her enemy been her own body?

How many months has she had nothing to fight but pain?

She forms her fists and holds them up. She is going to _enjoy_ this.

He dodges her first blows and her kick, though it sets him back on his heels. He swipes at her, his strange weapon sparking with electricity across its prongs and sending her sliding backwards, into the flowers. The green scent of crushes leaves rises around her.

She digs in her heels and regains her footing. Across the expanse of the floor he smirks at her and the weapon sparks again.

She reforms her fist and launches forward, sweeping low for his legs. He jumps up and over her kick but lands with his back to her, and is too slow to dodge her blow that punts him to the side, into the wall of the church behind a row of pillars.

It's doesn't take him down, though, and he springs backward as she closes the distance. She uses the pillars and the wall to give her the high ground, launching off one or the other to pursue him down the narrow space. She drops her elbow towards the crown of his head and he ducks, right into her high kick - a clean connection with his chin that sends him flying backwards.

But he recovers quickly and catches her next punch on the molded silver casing of his weapon. They strain briefly against each other. Their eyes meet and Tifa sees with jolt that his are ice blue and slit-pupiled.

_Sephiro_-

He shoves back with another spark of his weapon and she disengages, falling back but badly off balance, so that he easily steps in and kicks her in the gut.

Her sweater fits loosely, so the fabric twists and deflects some of the blow, but Tifa is still winded by it and falls into an awkward crouch. But she is able to see him coming, his left arm cocked back for a heavy blow, and ducks just in time. The spikes crunch into the wall behind her, casting stone dust down into her hair and over her face.

She tackles him and he cries out in guttural surprise. Airborne, Tifa grips his collar in both hands, wrists crossed, and tucks her legs up beneath her. She plants her heels into his solar plexus and _pounds_ him into the floor.

She lets go to spring away but a gloved hand seizes her ankle. He drags her around and then he _spins_ her. Her back crashes through a pew once, twice, and then he increases his rotation and hurls her towards the front of the church.

Muscle memory allows her to roll her body, bringing in her limbs and orienting so that when she hits the wall she does so with her feet, perched for a moment twenty feet high, the wooden beams of the sacrificial symbol beneath her gloves. In hypercolored battle vision Tifa sees the bright patch of the flowers down below, the gray blur of the church, its vibrant pink windows, the silver hair and blue eyes of the man standing in the aisle.

She launches off the wall and gets inside his defensive block, grabbing his collar and dragging him down the aisle, bouncing his head off the floor before throwing him in the air.

In a moment she gathers herself and leaps up, takes hold of his limp body, and casts him down as hard as she can into a pile of broken wooden pews.

Dust rises in a cloud.

Tifa lands neatly on her feet, panting hard. The exertion and the hard impact with the pew before he threw her have rattled her. She is out of shape, even without the Geostigma weakening her blows. Her left arm is shaking, but the adrenaline is keeping the pain low and muted.

"Tifa!" cries Marlene, darting out from her hiding place. Tifa takes a step towards her - they really need to go, she is thinking, and then she needs to call Cloud again and tell him that she found his secret materia stash and his secret clubhouse hideout and, also, there's some guy in black leather waking around with Sephiroth's snake eyes, is _that_ important enough to come back for? - when a tinny burst of music erupts from behind her.

The man rises from the wreckage, tossing broken bits of wood aside. He is dusty, his face screwed up in an expression of almost juvenile irritation, but there's not a scratch on him.

Tifa's heart shrinks inside her chest. She didn't even draw blood. Marlene clings to her side.

The man brings a phone out from a pocket somewhere in all that leather and flicks it open. He listens for a moment and then responds to whoever its, "She's not _here_." He angles away from Tifa and Marlene. "I'm _not_ crying!"

Then he turns back their way, drops his eyes to Marlene and says, "No, I got it. I'll bring the girl."

Tifa's blood turns to ice, the fiery adrenaline fading away with each heartbeat, chased away by cold fear. The pain in her left shoulder is rising like a fire. Her arms and legs are still shaking. There's no way she can fight him and win.

He pockets the phone and raises his arm. A beam of sunlight catches a corner of the molded silver and at the tips of the thick spikes. "Where were we?"

He reaches out and Tifa has one second to brace herself before he hurls an entire pew at her face, and she can't dodge, Marlene is right behind her, so she stands her ground and with her right arm she blocks it and knocks it aside, and then he is there _behind_ her, beside _Marlene_, and the spikes of his weapon power into her spine and cold electric fire races into her and knocks her forward.

He is there to catch her, to pin her against a pillar before he brings the gauntlet to bear into her gut and fires it again.

Her midsection explodes with pain so all-encompassing she hardly notices any addition to it as she blows through the pillar, as she lands hard amongst the flowers and grass. Their smooth blades press against her cheek. The scent of crushed lilies seems to cover her.

She can't breathe; her vision is half-black with spots. The man stalks over and kneels down, straddling her, pulling her up by the front of her shirt with his right arm as he draws his left arm back. Tifa can't even groan, every iota of air driven from her lungs.

The weapon cocks with a clear metallic sound right by her ear. He is going to drive it right into her temple. She still doesn't even know who this man is. Tifa is going to be killed on the ground in Aerith's flowers, inside the church that had always seemed safe, right in front of Marlene.

She can't feel anything but the unending explosion beneath her ribcage. A thousand red-hot pokers endlessly burrowing through her gut.

Something bright and round hits the man in the side of his face. It's materia. It's Marlene, throwing materia.

He turns, and carelessly drops Tifa, and walks away.

_Marlene_, Tifa thinks. _Marlene_. She rolls in the dirt and the grass and struggles to rise, struggles to breathe, fights to be able to do anything. She can see Marlene's face, tear-stained, pale, and afraid, as the man stalks through the yellow and white lilies towards her.

"Cloud," Marlene whimpers.

Cloud is not here. Tifa is not strong enough.

"Just…" Tifa gasps out, "just run!"

But it is too late to run, and she sees him grab her little girl before her world goes dark completely.


	4. Taking

She drifts in darkness and pain for some time, until a familiar voice calling her name drags her back to the light.

"…Tifa!" He is shaking her. "Tifa!"

She twitches and gasps and goes limp - everything still _hurts_. The back of her brain instantly begins replaying the moment the silver-haired man slammed her with that gauntlet in the gut, firing her nervous system with that agony over and over. But there is somebody here with her, who knows her name.

She forces her eyes open, squinting in the colored light of the stained glass windows.

Yellow hair. Blue eyes. This time, it _is_ Cloud.

"You're late," she whispers, although she wants to shout.

"Who did this?" he demands, leaning over her, hands tight on her arm and her waist. It should either hurt or it should feel good, but Tifa is only aware of it as a physical fact. The pain is too much, ripping outwards from her center. It feels like the only thing that has ever happened to her, but also like an echo, like a memory… Sephiroth's sword spearing down into her out of nowhere, a night full of flames…

But Cloud's question is a good one, she realizes, and fights her way into coherence. "He didn't say…" she whispers, going over the whole encounter with the silver-haired man once more-

"Marlene!" she chokes out, jackknifing upright in Cloud's lap. "He _took_ her!" New spikes of agony fire through her, and this fresh hurt married to the blackout terror for her little girl is so total is knocks her right back into the darkness, and she falls into Cloud's arms.

There is so little comfort there.

* * *

She smells flowers, and dust, and blood. She can tell that there is light beyond her eyelids, but to lift them would require more strength than she can muster. All of her power is leaking in a black stream from the Stigma on her left arm, taking leave of her body.

No one is with her. Tifa is all alone.

* * *

She wakes again. Much to her own surprise.

Her spine feels stiff, her hands like rocks where they rest on her stomach, void of sensation and impossible to move. The pain in her stomach is less, much less, and Tifa identifies the dull tingle of lingering healing materia. It's been two years since she has felt it.

The ceiling is familiar. She recognizes a water stain where a pipe had burst last summer, right before Denzel came to them. Cloud had been forced to climb into the tiny attic crawlspace where the pipes were and replace it. Tifa, caught up in the busyness of running Seventh Heaven while also keeping up with the laundry and making sure Cloud ate between deliveries and helping Marlene with her homework, had taken a cursory look at the stain, shrugged, and moved on to more important things. But whenever she was in the kids' room to roll them out of bed or force them to clean or, just a month ago, to repaint the walls, she couldn't help from looking at that annoying water stain.

She rolls her head to one side. Her head rests on a pillow, covered in a cotton pillowcase she has laundered a thousand times. There was the window, set in the blue wall. Beyond was the nighttime sky of Edge, the perpetual cloud cover dark, but lit from beneath by the streetlights and neon of the gray city.

After the paint on the walls had dried, Marlene had carefully put her drawings back up. Right by the window there is one of Cloud, his hair rendered in the brightest yellow that WRO crayons had to offer.

Marlene.

He took her.

Tifa rolls her head the other way. The other bed is empty, quilt rumpled, pulled hastily up to the pillow. On the little table between them is a half-full glass of water, and the picture of the children and Cloud in front of Seventh Heaven, and the one of Denzel with his parents, patched and tattered beneath the glass of its frame.

Denzel.

Where?

She still can't feel her hands. It's all gone now.

Beyond the doorway there is movement. Cloud materializes in the hall, stepping quietly even in his heavy boots, his eyes glowing faintly in the darkness. So Tifa didn't dream him up in the church.

He pauses there, before entering the room. He comes around the end of Denzel's bed and slowly sits down on it, across from her. He waits. Expecting her to be the first to speak, to reach out, to do something to make this easier for him.

Tifa does not. She keeps her mouth shut and her eyes open. Her silence and her gaze are the only weapons she has left.

Cloud shifts uncomfortably, twisting his gloved fingers together. The dim light from the window glints dully off his wolf's-head pauldron on his left shoulder.

"How do you feel?" he finally asks.

"Did you find Marlene? Is Denzel downstairs?" Tifa says.

He shakes his head.

"Do you know where they are?" Her throat is dry as the desert. She wishes she had the strength to reach for the glass of water.

"I'm not sure," Cloud says. "Reno and Rude are out looking."

Inside of Tifa, a thread of white anger curls. "Why aren't you?" she asks softly.

Cloud, damn him, looks hurt.

"When you left that night," Tifa says, "I felt guilty. But when you didn't come back, I felt angry. I still do. And I'm scared too. I'm scared to die and I'm scared to watch Denzel die. But you know what I'm most scared of?"

He slowly shakes his head. He looks like he'd rather be anywhere but here.

"I'm scared of you," she says. "I wanted us to fight this alone, and then you found out, and I thought we could fight it together. Even if we lost in the end, we could have fought it together. We could help each other. And then you got on that stupid motorcycle and ran. So I guess that only works for real families."

He hunches over, elbows on his knees. His gaze is trained on the floor. "Tifa," he says. "You are my real family. And there's still nothing I can do to help you. There is no cure for Geostigma."

_"Cloud."_ Tifa wishes she had the strength to reach out and punch him in the head. "I don't expect you to _cure_ me."

"But I-"

"Stop dilly-dallying," Tifa cuts him off. "Stop making excuses. Stop acting like you're so alone. Just… do what you _can_ do, Cloud. Even the smallest thing…."

Heart in her throat, she reaches out across the empty space between them. Her fingers twitch and her hand trembles. Her own weakness makes tears rise, and fear follows them: _what if he doesn't take my hand?_

But all Tifa can ever do is reach out. She can't make anyone reach back. That part isn't her choice.

He takes her hand.

He shifts off the other bed and comes to kneel beside her. He presses the palm of her hand to his face, and reaches over to take the hand still resting on her stomach. He isn't wearing his gloves, and his skin is warm. The heat sinks into the metal of the wolf's-head ring on her right hand.

The contact bleeds tenseness out of her, drives the numbness back. Tifa takes what feels like her first deep breath since their argument.

"We interrupting something here?"

Tifa jolts in surprise, and grunts when the movement makes her bad shoulder twinge. Cloud turns, removing her hand from his cheek but not letting go, to face the Turks standing in the doorway. _Cloud did say they were out looking for Denzel, didn't he?_ Tifa thinks.

"Did you find them?" she rasps.

Reno's hair is artificially bright even in the darkness, and his face as foxlike as ever. "No, only a witness. Kadaj's gang took them, a whole bunch of other kids from the district."

"Where are they?" Cloud asks, his grip tightening on her fingers.

"They're at their base now," Rude says. Who is wearing sunglasses, at night. "The Forgotten City."

"Cloud," says Tifa in confusion, "who is Kadaj?"

He turns back to her. "I'm not sure. I ran into him and his two brothers in the desert outside the city, the day that I… left." His eyes drop. "Rufus Shinra says they are remnants… of Sephiroth."

"Rufus is _alive?"_ Tifa is incredulous.

Cloud shrugs. "Somehow. He has the Stigma too. Worse than you or Denzel."

Tifa looks at the ceiling again, eyes trained on the water stain. Her skin crawls. "When I fought that man in the church," she says slowly, "there was a moment when I looked into his eyes, and they were…"

"…like his," Cloud finishes softly. To Reno and Rude he says, "You two, go." And to Tifa, "I have to talk to Rufus."

This is the last thing Cloud should be doing. Anything that delays him going after Marlene and Denzel is an obvious _no_. Anything that allows him to build these remnants up in his mind as pieces of Sephiroth is an even more obvious _no_.

She reaches out with both her arms and takes his face in her hands. She meets his eyes, blue met with that strange mako green, vivid and familiar.

"Stop running," she says softly. "I know. Even if you find the kids, you might not be able to help them. Maybe something will happen that can never un-happen. That scares you, doesn't it? But you need to think about now. What can you _do?"_ She strokes his cheekbones with her thumbs. "I know that it's more than you think."

His hands bracelet her wrists and he leans into her caress. His eyes seem to brighten, and his face, even though it is still stoic, loses that sternness it has held for weeks, and softens into fondness and longing and the grief he had refused to let her see. Tifa's chest aches with the sweetness of it.

From the doorway Reno says to Cloud, an obnoxious smirk in his voice, "You go. The base is all yours." She hears them leave, footsteps going down the hallway, but doesn't look away from Cloud.

His shoulders rise as he takes a deep breath.

"Tifa," he says, "I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?"


	5. The Forgotten City

Let me know what you think about the shift to Cloud's point of view. When I began writing I figured on doing so exclusively from Tifa's point of view, but story-wise it feels that skipping the Forgotten City sequence wouldn't work, both in terms of plot and character development. Also, I cannot tell a lie, it is one of my favorite scenes in the whole stupid movie. I watched the clip of this scene on YouTube several times, and was reminded of how pretty-boy hawt Cloud is. No wonder we're all ruined for real men, amirite?

Tl;dr- Feedback on pacing, plot, differences from canon, and POV-switch super welcome. Thanks for reading!

Shout out to . If you need background noise to help you study, write, sleep, whatever, MyNoise has a bajillion free tracks that runt the gamut from "Rain in the City" to "Japanese Garden" to "Gregorian Chant" to "Oblivion" and they are so helpful to me that I feel morally obligated to plug them here, for anyone who writes! Or studies or sleeps or whatevers.

* * *

The moon is white, full, and massive, looking down like a face in the sky over the skeletal frames of the trees. The roar of Fenrir's engine seems to split the night, and Cloud is aware that it will give away his approach to the silver-haired men. But speed will be an ally, too.

He couldn't go slowly if he tried. Tifa forgave him. He is filled with white light. It's as though the pale trees and pale moon are being lit up by him instead of the other way around. Nothing has changed: Tifa is still dying, Denzel is still dying, and he and Marlene are still captives of Sephiroth copies. But the sweet pain of being in the same room with Tifa for the first time in a week, and talking with her honestly for the first time in months, runs through him like a river, soothing his bruised heart.

Forgiveness. He had never put it into words before, that that was what he wanted most of all.

He thinks of Denzel's shaking hands when he first found the boy on the ground outside the church. He thinks of Tifa's tears when he discovered her Stigma, her hand outstretched across the space between them, the blue veins in her wrist and her scarred knuckles. He thinks of Aerith, fingers interlaced and head bowed as she prayed, and how much Zack had loved her.

The white light surges. He feels like he's about to break.

Maybe it's a good sign.

But he knows he is getting close to the lake of the City of the Ancients, where Aerith was killed and where she is buried. And it's where the Turks said the little gang had their base, and he so refocuses his attention from within him to in front of him- just in time to see the flash of a gun barrel.

He swerves on reflex and Fenrir's tires growl hungrily. The first shot is followed by others, and now Cloud sees the three silver-haired figures at the end of a tunnel of trees. With a touch the scabbards on the bike spring open, and Cloud yanks out two of his Fusion swords, the base blade and the hollow cleaver-shaped one. He accelerates.

The middle figure of the three- Kadaj- draws his own sword with his left hand. With the other he signals above his head- and on that signal suddenly there are figures dropping from the tree branches overhead, landing nimbly to stand almost unmoving in between Fenrir and the men.

It's the children, a crowd of all the missing children. And right in front, squarely in the illumination cast by Fenrir's headlight, is Denzel, his eyes wrong, and Marlene, clinging to his hand, flinching at the incoming light.

No time for the brakes. Cloud swings Fenrir around for a sideways stop and instantly loses control: he feels the balance of the bike change into a skid and throws himself from the seat. He crashes to the hard ground and tumbles, losing his grip on his base sword, hearing the rolling crash of Fenrir as it tumbles through the ranks of children. His heart clenches, until he realizes that the children are leaping away from the motorcycle, their small bodies as strong and agile as SOLDIERS. What have they done to them?

What are they _going_ to do with them?

He comes to a stop on his back, the breath knocked out of him. He gasps and makes one, two attempts to get off the ground. The cleaver is lying just a few feet away, he needs to get to it….

He manages to lever himself onto one elbow. Kadaj is stalking closer to him, and the children are closing ranks in a circle around the two of them. Cloud can't help the ugly catch in his chest when he sees Kadaj's fine silver hair and slit-pupiled blue eyes. There's a cold glee there that was never in Sephiroth's, but the burning contempt is the same.

Kadaj leans down and grins ferally. "I'm glad you could make it!"

"I only came for the kids," Cloud says, getting his feet under him with some effort. His landing off the bike was hard; his left knee is seriously messed up. _Stupid_, Cloud thinks searingly, _it's like I don't even need an enemy to lose a fight._

Kadaj circles to the side, forcing Cloud to turn his head to keep track of him. His skin crawls. What if the children attack him? He couldn't fight them. He'd have to run. But without Denzel and Marlene? He can't see either of them now.

This close, Cloud can see how young Kadaj is, the smoothness of his cheeks, his thin limbs and body, his narrow shoulders. He can't even be that much taller than Denzel. But none of this diminishes his malice: Cloud knows from experience how cruel the young can be, even without being a remnant of someone like Sephiroth.

"See this man?" Kadaj calls out to the small, blank-faced figures around them; Cloud realizes that their eyes, like Denzel's, are wrong, all of them blue and slit-pupiled. "He's our big brother. But alas…." He brings his sword to bear on Cloud's head. It is strange, two parallel curved blades springing from one hilt that trails a pair of long blue ribbons. "In our happy flock," Kadaj continues, voice dropping lethally, "he's what you'd call a black sheep." He winds his sword arm back for a strike.

"Cloud!" Marlene's voice rings out clearly through the ancient air, and Kadaj stutters in his movements for a split second.

Cloud doesn't waste it. He springs for his cleaver, pushing past the lingering numbness in his limbs and the spike of pain in his knee, and brings it around to swipe at Kadaj's belly.

But the youth leaps, easily clearing the blade and removing himself to a safe distance. A gun fires and Cloud instantaneously blocks the bullet: it's the other skinny one, standing on a small rise of the ground nearby, bearing the glitter of materia, and firing down on him.

That one lays down fire while the last of the three, taller and heavier than the others, lowers his head and charges Cloud like a bull. Cloud spins the cleaver to deflect the bullets, not thinking about the movements but allowing his instincts to direct his arm. Then the bull is there, jumping up into the air to hammer down at him with a fist outfitted with a strange silver gauntlet. Cloud moves out of the way, blocks a kick with his flat of his cleaver, swings in for an attack but is repulsed by a glancing blow from the gauntlet that still sends him back fifteen feet.

The bull grins smugly. This, Cloud realizes with a white anger, this is the one that went after Tifa and Marlene. He springs in, lifting the cleaver to cut him in two, but the bull is faster than he looks and punts Cloud past. Cloud lands hard on his knees- but he lands eight inches from his other sword.

He snatches it up just in time to deflect a punch from the suddenly close gunner, whose next kick connects with the center of his chest and sends Cloud flying backward.

He saves the fall, turns it into a flip, lands on his feet and ignores his screaming knee and rises up to meet the shots as the gunner starts firing on him. Cloud tries to close the distance and land a hit, but the gunner is light on his feet, dancing away, keeping Cloud at bay with the pistol. Cloud can hear him laughing softly, smugly. Behind the gunner, the bull slams his gauntleted fist to the ground, and a wave of dirt twenty feet high comes roaring in their direction.

The gunner smiles, cold and calm, his eyes glinting sinister in the white moonlight, and effortlessly springs up and over the shockwave. At the top of his arc he fires from the height, pinning Cloud down again in place. Cloud repels the bullets but the shockwave is still coming.

Cloud reaches forward with the cleaver, extends his base blade out behind him, and calls on the materia engaged in the hilt. He burns with the adrenaline rush that comes from using materia. It's been a while; there's not much call for a delivery boy to ante up. It pushes back the pain in his knee to background noise.

Power crashes up through the center of the blade and Cloud snaps it over his head and down in a crisp arc. Blade Beam launches off the steel and plows into the shockwave like a train, canceling out its momentum and spraying dirt and stones everywhere.

But the wave was only for cover: they're both on him then, and Cloud meets the bull's fists with his swords. A blow gets through his defenses, the gauntlet discharging into his gut, and Cloud cries out in pain and anger as it powers him backwards again. But he shrugs it off as the gunner gets right in his face, slashing at him. He fends off blows from both of them; he needs some distance if he wants to deal with either!

Cloud bends his knees and springs upward into the trees. But the gunner is right behind him, lithe and quick as he fires bullets that Cloud has to deflect and then getting close enough to trade blows.

But finally, Cloud tags him- a deep slash in one leather-covered forearm that instantly wells red.

"So you do bleed!" Cloud taunts.

The gunner's calm façade breaks and he snarls in surprise, bringing up his other arm and the pistol in it. Cloud catches the shot on his blade, but the force of it knocks it from his hand and it spins through the air. It chops deeply into the white trunk of a tree and sticks there.

Cloud follows it and the gunner lets him go, retreating slightly to another tree. There are no branches near where his sword is caught, but he can tell that the blade is buried deeply in the wood. He uses the sword itself as a handhold, swinging around the land lightly on the flat of blade- maybe he can use his body weight to work it free.

But before he can work out the mechanics of this, the air is filled with the sound of stone cracking, and the entire tree shudders and lurches. Cloud looks down and see the silver-haired bull at the base of the tree, teeth bared in a savage grin. Cloud remembers the shattered pews and pillars in the church.

The tree begins to fall. It is a deceptively slow motion, yawing to the side, and Cloud finds himself now standing on the trunk beside his sword instead of on it as the orientation of it changes.

This should make things easier, if Cloud can move fast enough, but the damn gunner is back, snickering like a school bully as he fires his pistol with his good arm. Cloud blocks with the cleaver and, with a grunt, wrenches his other sword free.

He leaps clear of the tree just as the bull smashes through it; the three of them are briefly airborne, and Cloud deflects bullets with one sword and punches with the other. But the bull is off balance, spinning wide and away from the zone of engagement, and Cloud takes the opening: plants his boots in the solar plexus of the gunner and launches himself to the tenuous security of another tree.

A glimpse, down on the dark ground, of another silver-haired boy. Cloud can practically feel Kadaj from here, his energy like a string covered in shards of glass.

He's sick of these two. Time to cut off the head of the snake.

It takes two moves to couple his cleaver to his sword, and then Cloud is rocketing down towards his enemy.

Kadaj meets him blow for blow. He's better than the other two- more like Sephiroth in his movements, with a reptilian quickness that keeps Cloud off-balance, defending instead of attacking.

He's circling left, the side of Cloud's hurt knee. His twists his upper body hard, batting Cloud's sword hard away to the right, and then his dual blade arrows in below Cloud's pauldron. Its two tips slice through the pink ribbon he wears on his bicep and score two deep stinging furrows high on Cloud's shoulder.

Kadaj laughs in delight. The ribbon floats to the ground in three pieces. Cloud retreats, pushing off his right leg, leaping high and away as Kadaj follows.

But before Kadaj can press his advantage, something knocks his sword away from Cloud. A red shape moves sinuously through the nearby trees, then surges forward, cutting Kadaj off from Cloud.

Surprised, Cloud loses control of his trajectory and crashes down hard on his wounded side, barely avoiding cutting himself on his own blade. He hears the gentle lap of small waves and with a jolt realizes that he is on the shore of the lake where Aerith rests.

The red shape descends over him, a tattered dome spinning elegantly above his body, less like fabric and more like fluid. Cloud blinks dust out of his eyes. There's a hand on his side, keeping him down, and Cloud recognizes the pale face of Vincent Valentine just as the other man opens fire on the silver-haired men.

The gunner returns fire; the bull gives an enraged yell and charges. Vincent wraps an arm around Cloud's waist and lifts him, as easily as Cloud can lift Marlene, and Cloud quickly secures his grip on the hilt of his sword just as Vincent moves them- the cloak itself seeming to bear them forward, zig-zagging, dodging, and finally moving upward into the darkness of the tree-tops.

Kadaj and his brothers do not follow.

* * *

After what feels like an hour dangling awkwardly from Vincent's grip but is probably no more then ten minutes, Vincent brings them gracefully back down to the ground. He not-ungently deposits Cloud on his stomach, and with a muffled groan Cloud rolls to a sitting position. He looks around, trying to get his bearings and see where they are.

They are still on the shore of the lake; Vincent must have followed the edge of the water. But the ground around them is unmarked by footprints, and the undergrowth flourishes. No one has been here recently.

Frustration surges. The peace of forgiveness feels a million miles away, or at the bottom of the sea. He has failed again.

Things might happen that can never un-happen, and that scares you, doesn't it?

Cloud drops his sword into the dirt and covers his eyes with his good hand. I knew I'd be no help.

He hears the scuff of boots, the clink of metal, the ripple of a cape.

"Vincent," he growls, "what do you know about this?"

If he is bothered not to be thanked, or even greeted after a year's separation, Vincent doesn't show it.

"I come here often," he answers in his gravelly baritone. "I've seen what Kadaj's group is doing. The Stigma."

At that Cloud drops his hand from his eyes. "They're causing the Stigma? How? Rufus Shinra told me it was from Sephiroth's mind infecting the Lifestream."

Vincent shows no surprise that Cloud has been talking to the supposedly dead president of Shin-Ra. With deliberate movements, Vincent tears off a long strip of his red cloak. "Technically, they aren't the ones causing it, although they are taking advantage of the opportunity." He kneels beside Cloud, pulls his injured arm out from his body, and begins to wrap the bleeding wounds, deftly handling the cloth despite the pointed fingers of his golden glove. "It's a symptom of alien matter infesting the body. The body tries to eliminate it and overcompensates." He pulls the cloth taut but not tight, and ties a neat knot. "Inside our bodies is a current, like the Lifestream. That current is what fights off any malevolent intruders." He stands and moves away, pacing to the other side of the small clearing.

Cloud blinks after him, touching the improvised bandage lightly. "Um. What do you mean by 'intruders'?"

Vincent looks down at him with his red eyes. "The Sephiroth gene. Jenova's memetic legacy. Call it what you want."

"You're well-informed," Cloud said warily.

"Tseng and Elena," Vincent said, naming the two Turks that Rufus Shinra had said were missing. "They were brought here half-dead. They must have been brutally tortured. I did what I could to save them, but…. Well, we'll see."

"Tortured?" Cloud asked, startled. "Why-?"

"They had it coming. They got their hands on Jenova's head."

Jenova. The same entity that Sephiroth had fixated on, and the reason he destroyed the people of Nibelheim. Cloud thinks back to that conversation in Healen with Rufus Shinra: the Turks' mission to the North Crater. _And what do you think we found? Relax- we didn't find anything._

That filthy, self-serving, manipulative bastard liar.

"Then when Kadaj says he's looking for 'Mother'…."

Vincent nods, crimson eyes glinting. "Heaven's dark harbinger. The calamity, Jenova. If they wanted to, they could re-create Sephiroth."

"Then Kadaj… What is he?" Cloud asks. Damn Rufus….

"Hm. I'd rather not know," Vincent says.

Before Cloud can really deal with the fact that apparently these new enemies are so unnatural and abhorrent that even Vincent Valentine- the man who spent years sleeping in a coffin and spends part of his time as a series of malformed monsters- would prefer to keep his distance, a loud rustle comes from the bushes. They both snap their heads around in unison, Vincent dropping a hand to the grip of his pistol and Cloud seizing his sword and leaping to his feet, listing slightly on his bad knee.

A small figure in white bursts into the clearing, bare arms marked with scratches from forcing her way through the thick undergrowth, pink ribbon hanging limply from an untidy braid.

Marlene runs right up to Cloud, grabs on with both hands, and buries her face in the front of his sweater.

Cloud grabs her shoulder with his free hand, urging her back a little so that he can see her face- see her eyes. "Marlene!"

"Cloud!" Marlene gulps. Her eyes are scared and shiny with held-back tears, and they are a true deep brown like damp earth, not the cold blue that Cloud had seen in the other children. She's breathing hard, and some of those scratches look deep, but other than that there's not a mark on her, and Cloud feels an ugly twist in his chest uncoil. "Denzel!" she says urgently, "and Tifa!"

"Tifa is all right," Cloud soothes, though the reminder that Denzel is still under the control of Kadaj stings again. He keeps his eyes on Marlene's little face, but he's listening hard for anyone else who might have followed Marlene through the bushes to the little clearing.

"I wanna talk to her!" Marlene pleads.

_Shit_, Cloud thinks. There's no way he can say no, but it means he has to tell Tifa he failed, that their other kid is still missing. Nonetheless he reaches for his PHS on the back of his belt. But nothing meets his hand.

"Shit," he says out loud. "I mean- I lost mine, Marlene. It must've been just now." They had thrown him around pretty good. He hopes it ended up smashed to pieces or something- the thought of the gunner or the bull listening to all the messages that Cloud has saved makes him want to cut something in half.

Marlene bites her lip, still not letting go of Cloud's shirt, and looked around to Vincent. She's met Vincent before, when Tifa was first putting Seventh Heaven together, so she isn't as intimidated by his foreboding appearance as she might be. "Can I use yours, please?" she asks him with wobbly politeness.

Vincent lifts his cloak to reveal a belt bearing nothing but his holster.

"You don't have a phone?" Marlene demands, incredulous and clearly nearing the end of her rope.

"Vincent," Cloud asks, "will you bring Marlene to Tifa? I'm gonna go see Shinra and get a few answers." Answers he needs, plus a Restore material- his knee is messed up enough to truly hinder him in his brief fight against Kadaj. Leaving Denzel here in the Forgotten City makes him feel sick, but realistically there's not much choice. The faint echoes of Zack's SOLDIER training are telling him that tactical retreat to gather info and resources is the best option.

And he isn't sure that he can look Tifa in the face after she's forgiven him, and he still can't fix a single thing.

But Vincent shakes his head. "I can't do that," he says simply.

Cloud is taken aback. What the hell else does Vincent have to be doing? "But I-"

"Forget it, Cloud!" Marlene wrenches herself free of his grip, real tears in her eyes now. "Why don't you ever pay any attention to us?" She retreated from Cloud hand and ran across the clearing to Vincent, ducking inside his cloak and pulling it around herself so that only her little sneakers were visible below the hem.

The coil in Cloud's chest rewinds itself. "Marlene, please give me some time," he pleads. "There's a battle to be fought… but it's not as simple as just fighting it. Understand?"

"No, I don't!" Marlene cries from behind the cloak, stubbornly staying hidden.

"Cloud, you sure this is about fighting?" Vincent asks quietly.

_Tifa reaches out and takes his face in her hands. They are cool and callused. She looks him in the eyes, and hers are the darkness of wine or rubies, throwing back tiny lights from their depths._

_"Stop running," she says softly. "I know. Even if you find the kids, you might not be able to help them. Maybe something will happen that can never un-happen. That scares you, doesn't it? But you need to think about now. What can you do?" She strokes his cheekbones with her thumbs, and he feels the comfort of the gesture deep in his bones. "I know that it's more than you think."_

Cloud's grip tightens on the hilt of his sword.

That's been the question all along, hasn't it?

What can he do?

Because he couldn't help or save Zack; for a long time he couldn't even remember his friend's sacrifice. He couldn't save Aerith, either. He could give Denzel a home but not a long life, and he could support Tifa in her business until he knew she was sick and it got too hard to be near her, knowing that he would lose her. Cloud can kill and fight and hold a grudge; what else is he good for?

I know it's more than you think.

"Are sins ever forgiven?" Cloud asks Vincent, because Vincent is one who is there: Vincent is one whose past is also a nightmare.

"I've never tried," Vincent says, an old weariness in his eyes.

Cloud sighs through his nose, feeling the sting of injury in his arm and his knee. He hadn't even known his heart was bruised until the lightness of Tifa's forgiveness lifted that pressure. He wants to chase that feeling.

What can he do?

"Marlene," he says finally. "Let's go."

Vincent's cloak twitches open and Marlene beams at him with a satisfied air. "Yes!" She leaves the shelter of the cloak and runs to Cloud's side, seizing his hand. Hers is warm and small, the fingers not even meeting around his own, but her grip is strong.

Cloud looks up at Vincent. "Well, I'm gonna try." A small smile rises unbidden to his lips. "I'll phone in the verdict."


End file.
